Thousands of students, faculty and staff use the SURF network every day to do their jobs and stay connected. And they are - justifiably - becoming increasingly demanding. That is why we are constantly innovating to make the network faster, safer and more reliable.
Fast 100 and 400 Gbit/s connection for research and education
Fast connection between the United States, Canada and Europe
The ANA-300G (Advanced North Atlantic) project is a reliable, state-of-the-art connection for education and research. This connection will transmit data between the United States, Canada and Europe at speeds previously only achievable on the mainland. ANA-300G was developed in a collaboration between five advanced networks for education and research. These are Internet2, NORDUnet, CANARIE, GÉANT and SURF.
Redundant and therefore more reliable
ANA-300G is a redundant network consisting of three 100 Gbit/s links between open EVPN exchanges on both sides of the ocean. This eliminates single points of failure and protects the link from outages in the unprotected, separate 100 Gbit/s transmission paths. The three paths are necessary because repairing an ocean cable can take several weeks. Should something happen to the remaining cable during that period, the facility would be unavailable. The third cable reduces the risk of failure to an acceptable level. ANA-300G builds on the success and lessons learned from the pilot phase. The pilot phase began under the name ANA-100G in June 2013 and ended in October 2014.
NetherLight one of the connection points of ANA-300G
Networks connect to ANA-300G via a number of open EVPN exchanges where data is exchanged via optical links. The open EVPN exchanges with a key role in ANA-300G are MAN LAN in New York City, WIX in Washington DC, NetherLight in Amsterdam, GÉANT Open in Paris, GÉANT Open in London and MOXY in Canada. These open EVPN exchanges follow an open connection policy, allowing anyone to connect to the network. The use of these connections naturally requires permission from the owners.